Switzerland might not be the first country that springs to mind as a natural home of metal bands. But, with a spectrum of domestic talent ranging from Celtic Frost to Coilguns, via the likes of Knut, Kruger and Promethee, it might be time to start reconsidering our preconceptions. Returning to…

Australia’s Progfest has been steadily gaining in size and popularity, in the decade since its inception. Just three years ago the touring festival consisted entirely of local acts. However, 2018 saw the bill expand to include Norway’s Leprous as international headliners, and the festival managed triple that number this year—drafting…

I’ve often written about the joys of simply opening an email and discovering fantastic music. Reformat was another example of this rare pleasure and an even more special one to boot; since the group makes a very special and unique type of post-rock which I love, hearing their music for the first…

So it goes with doom and doom-adjacent artists, the suffocating wear-you-down nature leads to a common endgame. The physicality of gargantuan riffs and laborious rhythms take a toll, eroding one’s sunshiny disposition to a hopeless and dread-bogged torpor. Despite (or because of) this, we love it. We live to feel…

The reason I love North American black metal is the crispness of their cleaner tones. Perhaps because bands making black metal in that part of the world are less beholden to the old, European aesthetic, perhaps because it’s a younger genre, or perhaps just because of chance and fashion, the…

There must have been a point, early in Slipknot’s rise to fame, where the joy of new fans discovering the band was only matched by the despair of house sound engineers when presented with their technical specifications for a live show. Pushing the size of your band beyond four or…

Up until now, every Bloodbath album has felt like an event—whether through the addition of a new vocalist or the return of an old one. Now, with Paradise Lost’s Nick Holmes recording two albums back-to-back, for the first time in the band’s history, it feels like business as usual. …and…

VOLA’s album from 2016, Inmazes, had the complicated pleasure of being a hit with a very specific subsection of the metal community. Far from the band’s first list, it was nonetheless their first release which put them on the map of the progressive metal scene. In fact, it sounded almost engineered…

A Scotsman, an American, and a Mexican walk into a bar. The Scotsman, wearing a Spazz shirt, compliments the American on his Discordance Axis cap, the American, in turn, admires the Mexican’s Insect Warfare patched jacket. All three order drinks, settling into a discussion rooted in their shared love of…

Warsaw’s Riverside return with their seventh studio album in Wasteland. Whereas 2015’s Love, Fear and the Time Machine sought to connect with sounds of progressive giants Ayreon and Opeth (who themselves are heavily influenced by the progressive music of the ’80s), Wasteland embraces something in between the progressive and psychedelic…